Mike Adams marks Purple Tuesday milestone

Mike Adams standing in front of trees and looking at the camera

Mike Adams, CEO of Purple

Congratulations to Mike Adams, CEO of Purple and long-time friend of Meet The Leader, who today saw Piccadilly Circus lit up in his organisation’s colours to celebrate Purple Tuesday

For Adams, who we first met and interviewed six years ago, it is a milestone in a relentless campaign to make organisations aware of the numerous commercial and social opportunities available to them once they make the changes to be more disability inclusive.

Companies who wish to participate in Purple Tuesday, which Adams’ charity-turned-commercial venture founded, are required to make at least one new commitment that will change the customer experience for disabled people.

As Adams wrote in his LinkedIn post this morning from a chilly London, “realisation has gone from key moments to a movement” with 5,000 organisations and 15 sector partners making 7,000 commitments.

The exact nature of the commitment is up to each individual business, depending on their specific resources and needs. Examples include undertaking an online and/or physical access audit, introducing regular ‘quiet hours’ for those with sensory impairments, introducing disability-related customer service training or introducing more inclusive marketing and product photography.

Meet The Leader has interviewed Adams on many occasions. In our latest article, published today in CA magazine to coincide with Purple Tuesday, he told Lysanne Currie that disability was historically seen as being about vulnerable people.

“It had been an issue about welfare and an issue about charity,” said Adams. “Purple is about shifting that dial and making disability resonate for businesses. We wanted businesses to see disability an as opportunity, as a contribution, as a talent pipeline – and as a consumer pipeline.”

In the UK alone, the purple pound (the spending power of disabled people and their families) is worth a staggering £274 billion, and it is estimated to be rising by 14% per year.

For Adams, disability is – or should be – a real commercial priority. “It can really impact and benefit the bottom line,” he says. “That has been a huge narrative and story to tell businesses who either hadn’t thought about it, or had, but only in a corporate social responsibility sense.”

He thinks it’s a perception problem. “The international sign for disability, the wheelchair, is known all over the world,” he says. “But wheelchair users only compromise 8% of the disabled population – 80% of disabled people have hidden disabilities.” 

 The big issue for next year, he adds, is “redefining accessibility”.

It is pertinent to note that on Purple Tuesday, prime minister Boris Johnson apologised to Israeli minister, Karine Elharrar, who was unable to access COP26 the previous day in her wheelchair. But as Adams says in his CA interview, while many assume catering to disability “is all about ramps and lifts,” in the modern world accessibility is also about access to online assets.

In a direct challenge to companies whose website aren’t accessible, he asks CEOs to try using their sites after unplugging their computer’s mouse, noting that 50-60% of improvements to website navigation can be made overnight at little or no cost. The societal and commercial benefits for organisations of becoming more disability inclusive are clear. There’s still time to make your Purple Tuesday pledge.

NEWSLysanne CurrieNews, disability, Inclusion, Purple Tuesday, CEO